Conservative Colleges That Don’t Conserve

So then, as Dylan said, you don’t have to be a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing. Progressives like to pretend that they are “the Resistance,” but the real resistance is going to have to come from people who believe the Bible, all of it. And one of the key battlegrounds with regard to this will be conservative Christian colleges that claim in their promotional materials to be places that will train our young people in and for that resistance. But how can they train anybody for the resistance if they are not resisting?

The issue will be sex and sexuality, and here are just a couple of snapshots for you. Hollywood has been such a Skeezeest for so long that they will certainly try to retell their groping stories as much more of a “coming of age” thing. And so we will be treated to movies like Call Me By Your Name, that will show their style of predatory sex in a much more wholesome light. Now here is a review of that perverse movie, and please note that the review is written by Alissa Wilkinson, a professor at King’s College. And over to the west, at Grove City, we find Warren Throckmorton, living within the tension of adapting to the world’s latest research on sexuality while managing to not throw away the faith once delivered, or at least not all at once. Check both here and here.

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1, ESV).

In the meantime, while professors at conservative Christian colleges are trying to find that sweet spot for living with the tension between faith and unbelief, my encouragement would be directed at two other classes of individuals. Those two groups would be parents of prospective students and donors to colleges. My encouragement would be to remember that there is no such thing as a sweet spot between faith and unbelief. Between God’s “do not eat from the tree” and the serpent’s “hath God said,” there is no third alternative.

Until these ostensibly conservative colleges decide that they are actually going to conserve something, I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole. I wouldn’t send students and I wouldn’t send money. And lest this seem a little bit self-serving, remember that there is also Patrick Henry. And Bethlehem. And others who are not bending the knee to Baal.